A principal (pardon the pun) definition of Money is: “a medium of exchange in the form of coins and/or paper currency.”It can also be viewed, simultaneously, as wealth, property or assets convertible into currency.Thus, in the form of a medium of exchange, it can be anything agreed as currency by both buyers and sellers.It is a step above one-on-one bartering by virtue of it being construed to have specific value beyond any given exchange of products or services.

In this basic form, Money as currency is the creation of governments or the governed.Any group can theoretically coin money, but the extent to which it is acceptable by those outside the group will be wholly dependent upon the nature of the currency.Gold coins, for example, issued in by a private group in Bhutan might be quite acceptable to a Chilean.

There is no requirement that the form ofmoney, such as paper certificates of one form or another, have some manner of intrinsic value -- provided that the individuals exchanging the currency have agreed to the valuation of the paper.But despite the fact that some of the world’s currencies (the so-called “hard currencies”) are readily acceptable everywhere, there is always the potential that sellers of products and services may decide at any point not to accept a particular form of paper money.

This often happens in countries where Currency Changes run rampant, where inflation -- the latter being caused for any number of reasons (natural or artificial) -- causes the national paper currency to lose value at a substantial rate.In the case of hyperinflation, the paper money quickly reaches the point of having so little value, that holders begin thinking in terms of papering their walls or lining their bird cages with the worthless certificates, rather than hold on to them as if they were something of value.

Any paper Money, which is not backed by something with intrinsic value, is always subject to becoming worthless once those using it begin to lose confidence in it.This was the case in the American colonies before and immediately after the American Revolution.It is also the reason that the Constitution of the resulting nation went to significant lengths to establish a national currency which was backed by tangible assets.It is also the gist of those Jeffersonian Concerns which dealt with the dangers of a Central Bank (as in The Federal Reserve), and the incompatibility of being free and in debt.

“No State shall.. make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in payment of Debts.”

The United States Code, Title 12, Section 152, states: “Lawful money shall be construed to mean gold or silver coin of the United States.”

Money is in fact defined as: “Coin, stamped metal; any piece of metal usually gold, silver, or copper stamped by public authority.”Bouvier’s Law Dictionary [1870, page 192] makes the definition even simpler: “Gold and silver coins.The common medium of exchange in a civilized nation.”

A 1934 Federal Reserve Note, however, contained the following statement:“This note is ‘legal tender’ for all debts public and private and is redeemable in ‘lawful money’ at the United States Treasury or at any Federal Reserve Bank.”

It might be thought curious that the Federal Reserve Note is ‘legal tender’, but can be redeemed for ‘lawful money’.Obviously, the two are not the same.In effect, Federal Reserve Notes are a legal tender, but not of the United States.Dollars are legal tender, but not all legal tender are dollars.Federal Reserve Notes cannot be “lawful money” for the United States.

More recent Federal Reserve Notes state: “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private”Please note that there is no period at the end of the statement, suggesting that perhaps the statement is not complete.E.g. not redeemable?There is also the aspect that the note is for all debts... not necessarily a means of accumulating wealth, but merely a means of addressing debts (and not necessarily even paying off a debt!).

Take, for example, the case where a Court orders a judgment to be paid in dollars.Because the Federal government is not currently coining any Dollars (and the States are prohibited from doing so), no person can pay any debt arising from a judgment of the Court.Since there are no Dollars available to an accused to pay the debt judgment of the Court, the Court has no capacity to enforce the judgment, and therefore lacks the ability to effect a remedy (as in Remedy and Recourse).Thus, the Court has no jurisdiction in the case, and the case should be dismissed.[But don’t assume that the above constitutes legal advice, or that the Court will buy the argument for a nano-second!Their idea of remedy might be to throw you into jail!And thus not allow you to pass go.]

The founding fathers of the country specifically forbade the use of paper money as legal tender for good reason.This has been described in some detail by Robert S. Getman (an attorney, practicing with the firm of Kelley Drye & Warren in New York City) in his article, Gold and the Founding Fathers.His thoughts (and others’) include the following:

Emperors and kings in previous centuries were not totally free to increase taxes, inasmuch as they had to consider just how much their subjects were able and willing to bear.In the cases where their subjects might have reached a breaking point, the kings often resorted to skimming off some of the precious metals of their coins (thus reducing the actual weight of the coins), or more slyly, reducing the precious metal content of the coin’s alloy.

In modern times, considerable research has gone into finding ways to replace silver coins with coins of almost no silver.As a simple test, pick up an older American quarter dollar coin and compare it to a newer American quarter, one commemorating one of the States of the union.There is a noticeable difference.The newer coin is lighter!Surprise!

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.Modern governments have gone far beyond royal coin-clipping and debasement by the use of printing-press financing.Rather than openly imposing unpopular taxes, they simply create increasing quantities of paper money and credit without any regard for the resulting shrinkage of money’s value.It’s like a corporation constantly increasing the number of shares it issues, and thus causing the value of any single share to decrease due to unrestricted dilution of the company’s per-share value.It’s illegal for Corporations to do this without prior approval.Governments are not so inhibited.

Governments have, in fact, initiated “legal tender” laws that require citizens (i.e. leave them no viable alternative) to accept newly-printed paper money of increasingly less value in payment for goods and services.In this way, government raises revenues by covert theft.“The complexity, indirectness, and relative invisibility of this taxation-by-inflation has made the government's spending activities unaccountable to the governed.”

It was because of the widespread fiscal frauds in the printing of money prior to and during the American Revolution, that the writers of the Constitution went to such great lengths to insure that gold and silver would be the only constitutional legal tender.Thus, from a constitutional point of reference the current issuance of alleged dollars in the form of irredeemable paper as legal tender is both unjustifiable and unjust.

“The Common Law Heritage is that Money is property.A basic question that the law has always faced is:Whose property -- that of the government or that of the governed?

“Under the traditional legal precedents of the Common Law, this issue was framed in terms of the power of the sovereign.By the eighteenth century, the common law had progressed to the point at which it regarded money as private property whose debasement was beyond the rightful power of the sovereign.”[emphasis added]

Under the precepts of Common Law, the Rights of the governed were superior to that of the sovereign, and limited the sovereign’s power.Not the other way around!The limits on money contained in the Constitution was an attempt to ensure the Common Law aspect of limiting any sovereign or government’s ability to debase the national currency.As per the Supreme Court, the Constitution “must be interpreted in the Light of the Common Law ... and [can] not be understood without reference to the Common Law.”

When the Constitution was written, the States had powers and constitutions already in place.The Constitution did not grant the States new powers, but did impose limitations on pre-existing powers (including the printing of money).At the same time, the federal government derived all of its powers from the Constitution.And under that directive, the federal government was to have no powers other than those expressly granted it.

One of those powers not granted was the power to make paper into legal tender.In the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8 gave Congress the power: “to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin...”This principle is unambiguous, and important!The States are expressly prohibited from making anything but gold and silver as legal tender, and Congress has no power granted to it, but to coin silver and gold.

Various Justices of the Supreme Court have noted that the power of coining money and regulating its value was delegated to the Congress by the Constitution in order to create and preserve the uniformity of such a standard of value.Gold coinage was indispensable to that goal.The purpose of the Constitution’s monetary provisions was intended to exclude everything from use, except gold and silver.The intent was that the dollar might represent property and not a mere shadow of it.

The Constitution recognized the Common Law precept that money was private property and not to be debased by the government.Its framers forged a clear mandate for a metallic money, specifically one of gold and silver.

But this constitutional mandate was and is being flouted on a daily basis.

The American Civil War caused enormous damage to the Constitution for the United States of America -- and not just in lives.There were unprecedented coercive measures by the government: the government forcing men into the army with the first draft law; meeting the financial cost, levying the first direct Federal tax on incomes, and by indirect means, through the depreciation of the paper money.This was followed in 1913 by the establishment of The Federal Reserve, and ultimately by granting this private corporation the rights previously restricted to the Congress.The Federal Reserve then initiated the use of worthless, colored (deceptive) paper money that had no intrinsic value, and ultimately could not be redeemed for anything of real value.

Nevertheless, the gold standard survived up until Franklin Roosevelt’s first term in office.But the “New Deal” and its devastating emergency measures, outlawed private ownership of gold by the infamous imposition of The Decree), eliminated the legal right to ensure the financial validity of contracts by tying them to the value of gold, and then progressively devalued the dollar.It wasn’t until the 1970’s that American’s right to own gold and base their contracts on real value was reinstituted.This latter effort is some of the first good news since the days of the Founding Fathers.

The idea of gold and silver as the basis for monetary policy is “an integral part of a system of free enterprise and limited government, of good faith and law, of promise-keeping and the sanctity of contract. It is this system -- and the confidence to which it gave rise -- that has been destroyed.It is this system that must be slowly and painfully rebuilt.”

The horrendous misuse of paper money is discussed in an article from the Rumor Mill News Reading Room Forum, a report on 30 December 2001 entitled: The Euro, Gold and the Dollar.A basic premise of the article is that the creation of paper money allows a government -- specifically the United States -- to acquire other nation’s natural resources, productivity, labor and wealth simply by printing up paper dollars, or even better, doing no more than making notations in a computer!

The quality of life in the USA is therefore derived in large part by a nefarious (definitely not judicious) use of banking manipulations.This technique has, however, no guarantees that it can be used indefinitely into the future, or in other words, that the con will continue to work.Judgment Day may be arriving sooner than expected!A condensed version of this scheme is provided under the heading of Eurogold, while the complete report is available at: <http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_01/atocha112601.html>.

The idea that only government can issue money is a fallacy.Money, like the fundamental right of free speech, properly flows from the individual. Taking the power of money creation away from the individual is, in fact, a denial of his civil rights.

By the same token, it is another lie when banks claim to be lending money, when, in fact, it is the borrower who is creating the money.But because of fractional banking, US banks can now loan anywhere from $30,000 to $70,000 for each $1,000 deposited.The lie is in the banker’s claim that the money being loaned is from the bank vault, when it is actually and simply being conjured up out of thin air.

“Now as through this world I ramble,

I see lots of funny men,

Some rob you with a six-gun,

And some with a fountain pen.”

Woody Guthrie, Pretty Boy Floyd.

Domestic banking is bad enough, but as Henry C. K. Liu (Economics Professor at the University of Colorado), international banking is more appropriately “predatory lending.”

“If a bank lends to a trust client who is a minor, or who had no business experience, to start a risky business, that resulted in the loss not only of the loan but the client trust account, the bank may well be required by the court to make whole the client.

“Now, there is a close parallel in most Third World debts, to the above example where sophisticated international bankers knowingly lend to dubious schemes merely to get the fees and high interest, knowing that ‘countries don’t go bankrupt’ as Walter Wriston famously proclaimed.The argument for Third World debt forgiveness contains a large measure of lender liability.”

There have been currency crises in 87 countries since 1975.Never in the history of the world have so many countries had such unstable banking systems. “By the late 1970s, there was a huge increase in the dollars floating around the world economy - the rate of growth in dollars between 1973 and 1980 was 20 times the growth in volume of trade.” [Adventures of the Dollar, by Howard M. Wachtel, professor of economics at the American University, Washington DC.]

Meanwhile, during the past 30 years the US has bombed or attacked Syria, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Sudan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Guatemala, Japan, East Timor, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Somalia, Haiti, Yugoslavia, and Panama.The common denominator of these nations is that they are all non-members of the World Trade Organization.Since the invention of the WTO only Japan has joined willingly; the South American countries have been “persuaded” by friends of the system.

Banking has become the primary “crime against humanity.”

(3/11/09) If one really needs

further evidence, one only has to observe the meltdown caused by banks and mortgage companies in the fall of 2008 (and continuing into the foreseeable future). One might also note Lindsey Williams' take on this issue (you will have to scroll down a bit to see his message at the Great Awakening). When coupled with the Geopolitics of The Next Hundred Years... it becomes all the more intriguing.

The Banksters are, of course, domestic and Transnational Corporations, and gleefully incorporate within their beings all the horrors and dishonesties of the latter.Corporate Rule is not just based upon the producers of goods and services, it is fundamentally an economic rule made viable by a medium of exchange which has no more value than the “0” in a computer byte.The fact that governments tolerate, allow, and/or encourage this situation is simply an indicator of just how far governments have left the province of being of the people, by the people, and for the people.

On a lighter note, there is a classic Bank Letter, which has circulated through Cyberspace and recently showed up in e-mail in-boxes the world over.Perhaps, this humorous aside by also be food for thought; i.e. treat them as they’ve been treating you (sort of a reversal on The Golden Rule).